this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2024
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[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 272 points 1 week ago (55 children)

This makes me sad. I wanna believe in gog. The last bastion of hope for gaming.

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[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 159 points 1 week ago (27 children)

Shit I really like GOG as it's the only competition to steam

[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 73 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There's also itch.io, which is great. It does have a lack of game selection, but we're comparing it to GOG, so...

[–] stardust@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Yeah itch lacks the bigger titles GOG has been able to pull.

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[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 142 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The former employee knew what they were doing with their choice of words.

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[–] BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 119 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

“GOG regularly adapts its structure to its strategy and ongoing projects, sometimes this means eliminating certain roles — as was the case recently.”

Yeah, but firing 30% of your entire contract workforce reveals that you don't give a flying fuck about sustaining the lifespan of the storefront and prefer to pad the executives golden parachutes from the stock valuation.

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[–] L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works 100 points 1 week ago

Running out of steam

Lol

[–] TipRing@lemmy.world 84 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Unfortunate. Competition is generally good for the consumer and I'd hate to see one of more more customer-friendly storefronts go away.

[–] stardust@lemmy.ca 24 points 1 week ago

Especially competition that actually delivers something unique a segment of the population wants as opposed to simply existing. Their DRM free stance and standalone installers are a pro consumer move giving control back to the consumer once they download the files.

[–] 7rokhym@lemmy.ca 76 points 1 week ago (33 children)

I'm really happy with my experience with GOG, but they put a lot of effort into their Windows app and i ws pretty blunt with my feedback, it is pretty useless to me and I find it unhelpful. Heroic game launcher on Linux great and cost GOG $0.00. My thought is that they have been focusing on the wrong things, fundamentally I love their strong DRM stance and when I am travelling internationally,the games I bought off GOG work, unlike Steam😡😡😡😡. So if they have come to this realization, then nothing about these changes are disturbing as a customer, but sad to hear their employees taking the hit. 😢

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[–] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 55 points 1 week ago

There's nothing wrong with the business model of selling older games at affordable prices. This is about poor management. (Or deliberately bad management by a "CEO" who was hired to destroy GOG to remove a popular choice from us).

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 53 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

I'd certainly love to hear that they're at least turning a profit. It's my default store now, but given the ambiguity of what I'm buying in the multiplayer space, and the lesser experience I get as a Linux customer, they're not making it easy.

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[–] aggelalex@lemmy.world 52 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Let's be honest, this was apparent for a long time. Steam, a centralised platform, has been making strides in Linux gaming and has been making innovation after innovation together with its steam deck. Gog, a forefront to freedom in gaming, barely did anything for the Linux gaming scene. No innovation either. Its just the simple (and well needed) premise of no DRM. It's necessary, but not enough. It didn't cater to its niche, it just committing to creating one under a premise. That's not how you go forward. How does this connect to bad management? Well, I think that with good management gog would make different moves. And wouldn't rest on its laurels so much.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 30 points 1 week ago (11 children)

It's pretty hard for GOG. Many of the things people don't like about GOG are not really GOG's fault, they are just a result of small market share. Steam is the bigger platform, and so naturally it gets priority for basically everything.

You game doesn't work on Steam? Then you'd better fix it immediately, because that's where the bulk of players are. But if your game doesn't work on GOG... well.. maybe fix it when you get some spare time. (Or maybe don't have a GOG version, because you don't want to have to keep multiple platforms up-to-date.)

So publishers and developers are generally less cooperative with GOG. And GOG themselves obviously have much more limited resources to do stuff themselves.

Steam's recent work with Linux has been great. And I do wish GOG would have something like that. But again, Valve has vast resources for that kind of thing - and they've been working on it ever since the Windows 8 appstore threatened to wipe them out. (That threat fizzled out; but nevertheless, that was what got the Linux ball rolling for Valve.) I'm in two minds about whether GOG should try to boost their Linux support. On the one hand, GOG is all about preservation and compatibility... and so it makes sense to have better Linux compatibility. On the other hand, it would be leaning further into a niche; and working on a problem that is kind of solved already. i.e. We can already run GOG games on Linux with or without a native linux version... it just could be nicer... Maybe it's not a good use of GOG's resources to go for that.

(That said, when I look at their linux start.sh scripts and see cd "${CURRENT_DIR}/game" chmod +x * it makes me think they could probably put at least a bit more effort into their linux support.)

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[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 50 points 1 week ago (3 children)

running out of steam

THESE PEOPLE HAVE TO GET DEGREES IN FUCKING ENGLISH TO DO THIS

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[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 45 points 1 week ago

I mean it is owned by CD Projekt

[–] als@lemmy.blahaj.zone 40 points 1 week ago

If only they were a co-op

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I really like GOG so it would be highly unfortunate to see them go under. I guess we really can't have nice things in this day and age.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 43 points 1 week ago (1 children)

GOG is a side project of CD Project, the makers of The Witcher and Cyberpunk. They are massively wealthy. If GOG goes down, it's because CD Project lets it happen, not because there is no other way.

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[–] Rooty@lemmy.world 36 points 1 week ago (49 children)

Too bad, I use Steam and it works wonderfully on Linux, but i don't want it to be the only option.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago (2 children)

i don’t want it to be the only option.

Neither do I but it is. GOG doesn't support Linux. Heroic is a 3rd party community effort. Valve is currently the only company making financial investments into Linux gaming.

[–] sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 23 points 1 week ago (7 children)

It does support Linux: it lets you download Linux installer for games that have a Linux port.

The lack of GOG Galaxy on Linux just means you have to manually manage your games.

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[–] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 33 points 1 week ago

This is a real shame, I used to buy all my games on GoG and had high hopes for the galaxy 2.0 client. Hopefully they keep going because we need a viable competitor to Steam that isn't awful.

[–] AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 32 points 1 week ago (14 children)

Thankfully if GOG goes down I don't lose anything.

Now if Steam goes down, I lose my entire library

[–] aido@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (9 children)

Gabe Newell has promised that if Steam goes down you won't lose your library, but we only have his word as assurance.

[–] AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 34 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No doubt the corporate drones that take over after his death will shit all over his legacy.

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[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 31 points 1 week ago

No....

They're the ones who preserve and update old games. I can't.. I can't

[–] feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago

The word choice is certainly not accidental.

[–] freeman@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The publication added that CD Projekt cuts jobs at its subsidiary every two to three years, with annual staff turnover reaching around 30%.

As summed up by another former employee, “GOG has been acting well tactically from a financial perspective, but poorly strategically, and the current business model is likely running out of steam.”

So nothing burger? Other than a corpo being anti-worker which is not news..

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[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 week ago

As a result, no one on the team has the courage to express their opinion. Under Gołębiewski, GOG typically makes business decisions that may be profitable in the short term, but may not contribute to the platform’s long-term growth.

Why half ass things when your the good guy?

[–] sirico@feddit.uk 26 points 1 week ago

People talking about money kinda missing the point this is a culture issue. They need to sort themselves out clean house if people can't be reasonable for their staff.

[–] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

I hope they stick around they are great for gaming. I need to buy off there more often.

[–] oo1@lemmings.world 20 points 1 week ago

I see what they did there. groan.

[–] DicJacobus@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

GOG was good for acquiring and re-releasing OLD GAMES. somewhere along the way they decided they wanted to compete with the big platforms and be "We're just like them but without DRM"

I haven't used GOG for years, they allowed me to relive a few of my old adolescence favorites, but stopped being useful to me a long time ago :/

[–] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Selling old games and new games isn't mutually exclusive, and more money tends to be spent on new games than old ones. It's not unreasonable to expect that selling new games too could subsidise the work to make old games run on modern platforms.

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